


the gap between loss and plenty

by magpie mountains (hollowmen)



Category: Cretan Labyrinth Stories (Greek Mythology), Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: 2017 Yuletide, Ariadne is Bad At Feelings, Brief mentions of animal cruelty, F/M, Modern AU, italics!, swearing!, the slowest burn ever in the universe, tw: mild anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowmen/pseuds/magpie%20mountains
Summary: Why did this place always let in the lovesick ones? Why couldn't I run a guesthouse for normal, sensible people who paid in recogniseable currency and didn't throw  tantrums in my flowerbeds? Was that too much to ask for?(Ariadne meets Dionysus. This is not the kind of thing one writes poems about.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lesserstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesserstorm/gifts).



The first time I met Di, he was an arse in the delphiniums. I don't really get arses as a thing, so I ignored it until it stopped heaving into the flowerbed. Then I stood upwind and kicked it, because I'd spent fucking ages on those delphiniums.

The arse toppled sideways with a noise like all the roosters being stepped on at once. Yelping followed, hoarse and uncomfortable, and then a sobbing which collapsed into long, drawn-out whimpers. It sounded like a dog being beaten. As this led to unpleasant recollections and the fucker seemed bent on producing an astonishing variety of injured noises for as long as it could, I went back to weeding the borage.

I had cleared the herb patch and moved on to the tomatoes by the time the delphiniums heaved again, disgorging what appeared to be a crawling, sodden mass of leaves into the gathering dark. It was wearing what might once have been a very nice three-piece suit in- perhaps brown, although it could very well have been navy blue, before it was drenched in a cocktail of equal parts vodka and vomit. And was that eyeliner around those bloodshot eyes, or had someone punched a bush repeatedly in the face?

Whatever. I gave up on attempting to locate a human in the semi-sentient shrubbery and went to weed the rhubarb patch. The dandelions had invaded sometime during the day and seemed bent on colonisation, which was fortunate for our salad.

"Beroooooe," moaned the arse in the suit.

I yanked up a dandelion.

"Beroooooooooe," the arse moaned, more plaintively. "She of the sunlit eyes and dappled hair! She of the river's laugh and the hunter's swift arrow, which hath pierced my ready heart with one shaft of her eyes!"

For fuck's sake. "That's a stupid metaphor."

"No!" Indignation, it turned out, was enough to prop someone upright, even if they flopped right back down again like a poorly-tethered vine. "It is so not, you take that  _back_."

Apparently, this arse was so sensitive it could hear poetic critique through three types of vegetation while miserably, sloshingly drunk.

"No." I kept digging. Dandelions have these taproots that go on forever, so you have to be careful not to break them off or they'll just spring back up again. "Are her eyes sunlit or pointy? Pick an attribute and stick with it." Another yank. "If you can."

"I can!" Impressively, the arse managed something approaching vertical for almost ten seconds. "But in this instance, the images work together as a combined classical metaphor for her eyes! You- you literalistic- _non-fictional_ -" and then it folded gently up and stared at the rhubarb leaves for a while.

I worked around it. When I started in on the mint, I must have caught its attention because most of it rolled over and peered through the hedge of its head. There was ivy in there, and a succulent. "Do you read poetry?"

"No."

"Where are you from?"

"Fuck off."

"No, I meant-" some vague waving around the earthquake aftermath of its face, or possibly at the partially-digested corn kernels. "Not that. Not that stuff. I meant  _poems_. Baudelaire. Li Bai. Cummings?" Something that might have be a leer, if it hadn't been mostly bush. "Sappho? Neruda? Angelou! Aphra Behn? You have to like  _one_  of them, you can't be made  _utterly_  out of proooooose."

Fucker. "What's wrong with prose?"

"Nothing." It lolled in the dirt, blinking up at me with great long cow's-eye lashes, some of it grass. "Just less pretty." More blinking. "You're pretty."

For shit's sake. "What about Beroe?"

This touched a nerve. It rolled over again and buried its face, such as it was, under the rhubarb. "Beroooooooooooooooooe!"

Fucking hell. Why did this place always let in the lovesick ones? Why couldn't I run a guesthouse for normal, sensible people who paid in recogniseable currency and didn't throw tantrums in my flowerbeds? Was that too much to ask for?

"My heart is a restless, grape-dark sea beneath thy ruthless feet, Beroe! Crushed, I bleeding must commingle, bitter-sweet, my Art and Woe!"

Clearly it was. "Get the fuck out of my rhubarb," I said, climbing upright. I was done here, anyway, and sick of the smell of sick. "Come on. Up."

It was an obliging bush. It rolled sideways out of the leaves and straight into my gumboots, and then proceeded to look queasy as fuck. "Why am I alive?" it whimpered, clutching my ankles. "Please, kind goddess, bury me beneath the rhubarb, and in thy orisons rhubarber me. No- rerhubarb. _Rhubarb_." It paused, and then dropped its head-foliage onto my rubberised toes. "I have become a crowd of frogs. I can crawl no lower. Ko-ax me if you have a heart."

Ugh. "Get up. Before I change my mind." If I got the arse into the downstairs shower in the next twenty minutes, there'd still be hot water left. Not that I particularly cared if it was hosed down with cold, or left out here, but the mosquitoes were flooding in with the dusk, and a picked-clean skeleton looks unsightly among the vegetables.

A heavy thump of a skull onto my foot. "Change your mind about what?"

"Letting you in." I lifted the gumboot, tipping its head sideways so it could see the building, which at this point was a darker patch of darkness perforated with lights. I could just make out the  _Naxos_ in peeling white paint, though, a leftover from when my house had been a local music academy. It was pretty, almost, all those odd-coloured lights in the night, if you were the kind of person who thought 'eclectic and shabby-genteel' was pretty.

"Ooh. Pretty."

Right.

"But it's so _far away._ "

I let the arse's head drop back to the earth. "Better start crawling, then."

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a brief depiction of a mild anxiety attack, which is being had and handled by someone who knows how to manage it.

Beroe, I learned, was a biology student staying in the nearest town. Her mother owned the second florist to the left of the fish and chips, where Beroe ("eyes of gold!") was staying ("like the brazen gongs of Byzantium!") over the summer break ("o bosom-friend of the newborn sun, in whose hot arms the nymph tarries!").

This Beroe was sublimely uninterested in the arse, whose name, it turned out, was Di.

"Like the verb," he explained, somewhat muffled by the crook of his elbow and my kitchen table. I put a fresh mug of tea down by his head, which had emerged after last night's hose-down and defoliation as a mess of dark curls. "Like my brain. Like my crumbling, thwarted _dreams_. Like my eternally bruisèd _heart_."

"Bruises," Babushka grunted, jabbing him in the side with her walking-stick. She was grouchy this morning; rain made her joints stiff. "I give you bruises. Eat porridge." Another jab. "Make you less hungry. Less hungry, less noise."

"Porridge," Di whimpered, oblivious. "I'm dying of heartbreak and the Worst Hangover in Existence and you speak to me of  _porridge._ " He managed, somehow, to ooze into a more woebegone pile of limbs, shoulderblades jutting up like tiny wings in his shirt (I shifted the mug further out of his reach, just in case). Really, it was quite a nice shirt Odi had lent him, a heathery green thing in some kind of nautical print, which didn't explain why Ah Poh was frowning at it like it had dishonoured her cow.

"佢真係太瘦," she hissed, clutching the congee pot as she shuffled in next to me. She started spooning some into my bowl, ignoring the rib-sticking stodge Odi had made for the earlier eaters; by this point in the morning, it had congealed into the sort of thing you could build houses with.

"He eat!" She stabbed me with a bony shoulder of her own. "頭痛，病，喝咗太多酒？ 吃粥。"

At this juncture, the blanket that was Cass wobbled in through the door, made a tiny  _eep_  noise, and wobbled back out again. Ah Poh levered herself up with a long-suffering sigh. "I make toast."

"Give her jam," Babushka ordered.

"My  _poor head_ ," Di wailed, and flung out his arm in a gesture probably intended to convey the vast depths of his suffering. None of the other objects on the table appreciated this.

What followed was an interlude of high-pitched shrieking, in which Odi's shirt was torn off and flung across the kitchen in a rain of boiling leaf water (fuck), jam hit the ceiling (fuck no), congee cascaded into my lap ( _fucking hell, fuck shit ow_ ), Babushka cackled so hard she fell out of her chair and Ah Poh started counting Di's ribs out loud with the kind of quivery righteousness that made her unbearable. I slapped him over the head with a wet teatowel.

"Stop _screaming._ "

He stopped. Teatowels to the face tend to do that. When I yanked it off his head, his hair had achieved a familiar state of sodden and he was breathing in great shaky gulps.

"Do  _not_  throw up."

He shook his head frantically. I dropped the cloth over the growing red blotch of his shoulder ("...三，四，五..."), grabbed his wrist and limped for the door. " _Move it_."

The downstairs shower already seen too much of his arse in the last twenty-four hours, but I shoved him in anyway and ignored the screeching as the water slapped down. He screeched more when I shoved him over and stepped in, but at that point I was too busy swearing inside to care because this was the _fucking Antarctic,_ what the actual fuck _,_ how was this fucking preferable to being boiled to fucking death by _bloody fucking shit-arse porridge?_

I hate the cold.

I fucking _hate_ the cold.

"Twenty minutes," I said instead, because I am a miracle of self-restraint and decorum. I started peeling my skirt off, and paused when the fucker made a sadly familiar impression of a bottlenose dolphin. When I turned, he backed into the wall with a wet smack, eyes huge.

"-  _ow._  What are you doing!"

"Not scarring." I set my back to him, letting the cold flood down over my head (fucking _fuck_  why). I was freezing, my legs hurt like an absolute bitch and I was trapped in a small space for twenty minutes with a complainer; if he started making fifty kinds of injured animal noises again, I would bloody drown him.

But there was nothing, other than the thundering of glacial fucking rivers.

It was wonderful. I'd forgotten how beautiful silence could be, even with the burning of my legs and the incessant cold. For the first five or so minutes, I luxuriated in an absence of screaming, until the silence reached a point where it stopped being soothing and became suspicious. But when I turned around again, prepared for a mime act or a solo tableau of martyrdom, the arse was just- standing. He was still plastered to the back wall, only now he was trembling and looked like I'd kicked his dog off the side of a church.

Shit. Had he always been this pale? Water was running pretty steadily over the red blotching his shoulder and chest, so it couldn't be pain, surely. Did people- wait, what about shock? People went into shock, right?

"What is it."

He stared at me, which was disconcerting in a space this small. If I wanted to look back at him, I'd have to tip my head back a bit, which yeah, no. Forced proximity might be an occasional necessity, but intimacy can always be avoided, especially when the other fucker is ravingly in love with some nymph with burnished hair.

But that scalding-

And he was still shivering, which was starting to worry me. The amount of paperwork required for a death in this area is horrific. And shouldn't he have gotten used to the temperature by now? Was all that redness normal? Why the fuck were people so fragile?

For the sake of a lighter paperwork load, I backed up into my bit of the wall (shitting _cold,_  fuck) and pointed at a tile with more access to the showerhead's optimal spray zone. He shuffled obediently forwards, water slicking his hair down, and I tried to get myself comfortable for a stint of waiting (fucking shit _fuck_ ), which usually works for talkers.

It didn't work for this talker. "Di," I said, finally.

He swallowed. I directed an unimpressed look over his shoulder at the tiles on the far wall, which was close enough to his face to see him scrunching it up in my peripheral vision. When I rolled my eyes at him, he huffed out a warm breath I could feel on my skin, which: uh, way too close. I took a step back, and remembered belatedly there wasn't anything to step back to (fuck fuck _fuck_ ).

"For fuck's sake," I said, instead. "Talk to me."

"They were laughing," he said, so quiet I could barely hear him over the water. Curious for someone so loud. I kept waiting, breathing slowly and watching his throat move as he didn't say words, swallowed, and didn't say more of them.

"Why did," he said eventually, after a whole round of false starts. And then, "I'd thought-" He sucked in a shuddering breath, and might have tried at this point to look me in the eye, but I was still paying close attention to the far tiles (the grouting needed scrubbing). "Look, I'd just thought they were kind, I guess. Is all. So- when they laughed and sat there, while I was- it surprised me."

I tried to work out what that meant while staring at the greyish gunk collected between the tiles. _Surprised_ certainly meant _distressed_ in this instance, or possibly even _hurt_. _Screaming_ or _flailing_ or _having hysterics_ could wrap up that unfinished bit, and as for _they_ \- "what, you mean Babushka and Ah Poh?"

"Yes?"

He sounded uncertain in the face of my uncertainty. I blinked, refocusing after a moment on his left ear. "Why would you think they were kind?"

It was his turn to look confused, which he did rather better than me. "Aren't they? They- wanted to take toast to the person who came in, and- said I should eat, and made you porridge with the rice?"

He'd picked up a lot, for someone facedown on a table with the Worst Hangover in Existence. Picked up a lot and somehow misinterpreted it. "But why would that mean they were kind?"

His confused face intensified, which meant extra nose-scrunching. He had freckles there, scattered like strange constellations, which after a moment I decided to stop noticing. "Because- that's what kindness looks like? And people generally are? Kind, I mean."

Fucking hell. Had he never met any actual people? Were Beroe and her mother imaginary? That would explain so much. "Where the fuck did you come up with that?" I asked, peeling myself off the wall as the cold finally tipped from 'distressingly unpleasant' into 'nope nope nope get the fuck out now'. I crammed myself into the corner furthest from the showerhead and tried to breathe slow and deep, regretting my entire existence.

"I- experience?" He shifted too and squinted at me through the spray, trying to read my expression. Whatever he found made him blink again, startled. "Oh. You don't think so?"

I shrugged, too busy concentrating on my breathing to care. But when I glanced up again, he was watching the wet uncoiling of hair down my bare shoulder, which: now  _that_ was a distraction. I crossed my arms, and he flicked his gaze up to mine and flushed pink. "Sorry. I didn't- sorry."

My god, how had someone not eaten him alive by now? "Look." I redirected my eyes to his chin, glad for the familiar burn of irritation. How could I put this simply for someone I suspected wouldn't understand? "Di. I'm not sure where you come from, but the folks who turn up here are- generally, they're good at surviving in rather complex conditions. Which often means that they're the kind of people who weren't- made to be kind."

He set his jaw. "Everyone's capable of kindness." Shit, you could trek up the Himalayas on that mulish look. I shook my head, impatient. "No, that's not- I mean they weren't- shaped, in an environment hospitable to- to the development of kindness. Does that make sense?"

Was that contemplation or incomprehension in the twist of that long mouth? I sighed and gave up. "Look, Di, they're trying. Okay? But they don't know how. Which means that they fuck up. And aren't kind. And will laugh at you when you've just been scalded."

He was looking at me, I could feel it. "Okay," he said slowly.

"Just don't expect them to be kind, and you'll be fine."

He was still looking at me. "Okay," he said again, and I flicked a quick glance at him to see if he understood, and for fuck's sake, those freckles. And with the mess of his hair slicked down I could see his eyes were actually an odd flecked green, not the brown I'd assumed they were.

"No," I said, as flatly as I could. "Stop looking at me like that, you fucker, I was not talking about myself."

"But you are kind." He squinted at me through the spray, alarmingly earnest. "Sort of. In your own way."

Fucking hell. "Okay, we're done here." I got out of the shower as quickly as I could, before things got any weirder. When he made to follow me out I turned, jabbing a finger at him. "Stay, fucker. That thing needs another ten minutes, unless you want your pretty white-boy arse scarred."

A choked-off noise, and then he was draping himself against the shower door, mood shifting quicksilver into something else. "Ariadne! You think my ass is  _pretty._ " He was grinning, the arsehole, and showing the fuck off. I flipped him the bird, gathering my things from the floor as he tossed his wet hair and posed some more, preening. "I'm flattered. Honoured, even. I know my derrière is sheer poetry, but I hadn't thought you  _noticed_."

I kept the appropriate finger held up in his direction as I left, and heard him laughing as I dripped all the way down the hallway and back into blessed warmth.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. "佢真係太瘦" : "He really is too thin."  
> 2\. "頭痛，病，喝咗太多酒？ 吃粥。" : "Have a headache, feel sick, or have too much to drink? Porridge."  
> 3\. "...三，四，五..." : "... three, four, five..."


	3. Chapter 3

A few days later, he moved on.

That, I thought, was the end of that. I get a lot of folks who come through for a few days and then disappear, never to be seen again, so I put him down as one of their lot and went back to a slightly less dramatic existence. My flowerbeds were grateful, my kitchen stopped being hazardous and my other lodgers came and stayed and went, as guests do. All was well, for a given definition of well when you're never sure how you're going to pay for the next plumbing incident and somebody is always leaving the fucking freezer door open.

And then two months later, the fucker turned up again with a packet of delphinium seeds and a shirt for Odi, an expensive bluey thing printed with little whirlpools and islands. And when I asked about Beroe, he blinked at me in bewilderment before going, "Oh,  _Beroe_. Right. No, she wasn't interested, so I left her alone. But have I told you about  _Calliope?_ "

(He told us about Calliope. "Skin like darkest night! Eyes like stars at the end of the universe! Voice like honey and cream, she's a composer, she writes these epic symphonies that would make you  _weep-_ ")

And then he left. And reappeared three months later with a loaf of bread, a purple paisley monstrosity for Babushka and enough nails and wood to fix the hole in the roof above the attic ("Have I told you about Thalia? She's a scientist, wears spectacles like a goddess, and has this thing about the reproductive systems of yeast, which,  _reproductive systems,_  am I right-  _ow_ , hey, stop throwing things at me, Ari, call Ike off-").

And then he left. And showed up like a bad cold a few months after that, clutching a fucking  _marmalade kitten_ , and also an out-of-print book on lacemaking for Ellen ("So Clio has these grey eyes, storm-grey, and an incredible stern librarian look, which- yes, okay, I can see you glaring, I'll stop, Ari, have _mercy_ -")

And then he left. And reappeared. And left. And reappeared. And this kept going, and continued to keep going, for long enough that it became- utterly irritating. How did he keep finding all these people, none of whom appeared to be interested in him? The fucker wasn't half bad to look at when he wasn't puking in my flowerbed, and there were those freckles, and he could be charming when he wasn't a ludicrous arse. And then there were those expressive hands, and that mouth, and he was so earnest and genuinely invested in people it horrified most of my lodgers, who, like me, had a more realistic approach to human relationships. And apart from the neverending string of new loves, Di was one of those hideously well adjusted types who- well, it wasn't like we didn't get the occasional normal here, but they never stayed long. So why the fuck did this fucker keep showing up?

"It's the plumbing," Babushka said, crocheting furiously at the table. Yarn tangled everywhere around her, a giant spiderweb of colour spotted with tiny pots of preserves, which Ganymede was currently occupied with tasting. "It is eternal mystery, the pipes in the house. All men drawn to it like flies."

Ike sniffed, banging his heels on the cupboard. He'd met Di several reappearances ago, and was not impressed. "He likes an audience," he suggested, which: hypocrite. Ganymede's sunburnt face said she thought so too. Ike grinned at us and tugged his crutches down from where he'd shoved them, watching me out of those bicoloured eyes. "What gives, A? You don't seem to mind when we go off and come back. Orph swings through every few years when he's done touring, Percy turns up every summer with her mum, and you know how Odi goes rambling with that giant stick of his." (Coughing from Ganymede, as a peach compote went down the wrong way. I decided I didn't want to know.)

"Yeah, but you lot belong here," I pointed out. I was attempting to bake, which was not one of my strengths, and it was making me flustered and grumpy. It didn't help that Babushka had claimed most of the table with her yarn and refused to move. "You're all fucked up like the rest of us." I squinted at the lump of dough in the bowl, wondering what 'risen' was supposed to look like. "Also, you're my lodgers."

"And he's not?" Ike hopped off the counter, wincing as he landed wrong. "Fucked up, or your lodger. I mean, he's around enough that you gave him a back door key like the rest of us. Yeah, I saw that." He stuck his tongue out, daring a perilous lean on his crutches to steal one of the jam pots Ganymede had already tried. "I dare you to ask him about it next time he comes around. Double dog dare."

I shrugged at him. "It's not important."

"Uh-huh." He looked unconvinced as he hobbled out, ducking the yarn ball Ganymede launched at his head.

"Do  _not_  rearrange!" Babushka shouted, prodding Ganymede with her crochet hook. And then added, still at a ridiculous volume, "Ariadne, make the boy cook the good pudding when he comes next, yes? He knows I like this, and even if tricky, he will do if you ask him."

Ikeish cackling echoed down the corridor outside. I punched the dough down with more force than required, and decided to forget about it.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

I did not forget about it.

I rarely asked Di- anything, really, other than the ordinary stuff or the occasional  _what the fuck do you think you're doing with that screwdriver, Di, if the house collapses you are paying for a new one_. I'd learned that first week that if I asked him anything, anything at all, he'd answer me truthfully. Probably even earnestly, the fucker. And always without any attempt to protect himself, even if the truth was something that left him vulnerable to cruelty, or manipulation, or just plain accidents. And that was the problem with Di, wasn't it? He wore his heart so deliberately on his sleeve it made most of us want to layer him in extra coats, if only so he wouldn't bleed all over us when that heart got inevitably bruised or stabbed. Which it did, often. He clearly didn't have any coats of his own, or if he did, the idiot didn't wear them.

It was utterly bewildering, and also frustrating. What was I supposed to do with someone like that? How do you protect someone from themselves, when they refuse to wear appropriate clothing while bouncing about a world full of porcupines and razorblades and cacti?

"Are you suicidal," I said abruptly one day, when he'd resurfaced again with a whole fruitcake, a toilet seat for the third floor, treats for Agent Orange and a new tale about a Pallas ("hair of spun gold and a mechanic, she's so good with her hands but she won't even  _look_  at me, I think I'm going to expire from heartbreak this time, no really, stop laughing, this is a tragedy-").

Di blinked up at me from where he was crouched, attempting to coax the Agent from her hiding place under the cupboard. "No?" he said, expression more curious than confused. "Why?"

"Do you like pain." I turned my eyes back to my needle, because I didn't. Also, blood on Ellen's wedding dress would be a fucking arse to get out. "Is this some kind of- sex thing, for you."

He was looking at me again. It was easy to tell; I'd learned he went still when he was paying particular attention. "What are you asking me, Ariadne?"

"Exactly what I said." I made the next neat stitch. I'm no genius at embroidery like Rush is, but straight lines I can do without thinking. "Do you like pain."

He was laughing, a little. "Only in certain circumstances."

Arse. "Not like that."

"Then like what?" He was grinning, wasn't he? I could hear it. "What is it, o mistress of the guesthouse of Naxos, most holy keeper of this maze of corridors?" He nudged my knee, because he was a toucher as well as a flailer. "Ask and I shall give ye all that is mine to give, even to half my kingdom. Or all of it, really, if you want it."

He sounded distressingly sincere, which was the problem, wasn't it? I dropped my sewing, glaring as I jabbed the needle in his direction. " _That,_ " I said, punctuating words with accusing stabs of the air between us. "No, don't look like you don't fucking know what I'm talking about.  _That's_  what I mean." Ellen's wedding dress slithered off my knees and onto the floor, but I ignored it. "You mean it, don't you? I could ask you anything and you'd tell me the truth."

"Is that a bad thing?" He'd gone still again. "I hadn't thought it was a flaw, honestly. Should I start?"

"Yes!" God, and he was watching me so carefully now, as if he was afraid I was the one who would break. "You don't- I swear we've gone over- look, this is-" For fuck's sake, I was starting to talk like him. "Look. Cactuses."

"Cactuses?" He wasn't smiling, which was- disquieting. Di was always smiling about something, and I hadn't realised how reassuring I'd found it until he stopped.

 _"Cactuses,"_ I repeated, because emphasis felt important here. Emphasis and glaring. "Everything is cactuses, or fucking porcupines, or- or durians. And you- come in here, and fall over things, and swan about everywhere, and expect everyone to be kind and honest, and you don't wear enough fucking clothing. Or any at all! What are you  _doing?_ "

What he was doing was looking at me, and not saying anything. There was a small crease between his brows, like he was trying to figure something out. Me. Like he was trying to figure  _me_  out. I jabbed my needle into the pincushion and stood up. "Do you like being hurt? Is that it?"

I needed something to do with my hands that wouldn't risk expensive fabrics, which meant baking it fucking was, then. I pushed past his arse to grab a bag of flour from the pantry, trying to work out how many people were in the house tonight: Odi, Ah Poh, Babushka, Ali and Ganymede, Ike, Micah, Ellen, Di...

There was the noise of fabric being gathered up behind me, a rustling of lace and satin and yards and yards of netting. The sugar had spilled into the drawer of plastic bags, which I left for Ike to deal with (it was definitely Ike) and went for the pantry, thinking about biscuits. Or scones. I could do scones; butter was so fucking expensive these days, but we had cream, and there was a recipe that used cream, wasn't there?

When I turned for the fridge, Ellen's dress had been heaped neatly onto the chair I'd left, and Di was standing at the kitchen table, watching me. The crease was still there in his brows, and he looked more serious than I'd ever seen him, which had stopped being disquieting a while ago and was now verging on just plain distressing. "Ariadne," he said, and when I walked past him- "Please. Will you look at me for a second?"

Fuck's sake. I turned my face towards him, but kept trying to remember the fucking ingredients in this recipe. Didn't it need lemonade? I was pretty sure Ganymede had finished the whole litre off last night, and we had nothing else carbonated in the fridge-

"What I'm hearing from you," the arse said, very slowly, "in resplendent metaphor, might I add, I _knew_ you weren't all prose- is that you're worried. About me being too open, about what I show, or think, or feel."

I eyed the window, which was mostly obscured by the cloud of his hair. Also his face, which I wasn't looking at. Would there be enough light for me to do the gutters after baking? Babushka's joints had predicted a storm soon, and I wanted to make sure we didn't develop any impromptu water features. But if he kept talking-

"What I'm hearing is that you think my- openness, is hurting me. And you don't understand it." He fell silent, clearly waiting for some kind of response. When I let myself look at him, his smile was small and- for the first time that I could recall, seemed to be hiding something. "Have I got that right?"

I shrugged, which he correctly interpreted to be a yes. "Right. Well then." He stopped again and made a noise I couldn't decipher as I went back to grabbing things from cupboards. "Are you- Ari, I can see you're hating this entire conversation right now and wishing it were on fire, but could you hold still a second?"

"I," I said through my teeth, "am baking. And need. The ingredients."

"Yes," he said, with an infinite patience that was getting the fuck on my nerves. "I can see that. But I'd like you to understand that this isn't entirely easy for me either."

I slammed a bag of apples onto the table between us. "Then why are you doing it?"

"Because it's important." He bent a little to catch my gaze, and the slant of sunlight through the window turned his eyes the colour of moss. "Because it's important enough that I'm choosing to, even though it's uncomfortable."

I glared at him. That, clearly, was his answer to the question I hadn't asked, and I didn't like it. It smacked of- of a complete lack of self-awareness, or a naïveté I didn't expect from him, even considering his usual disregard for his own safety. And maybe he saw that in my face because he sucked in a short breath and said, "Sometimes I don't know why-" and then stopped, screwing his mouth up like he'd said too much.

"That," I said, "is exactly what I'm asking," and I started peeling an apple with a viciousness that surprised even me.

Whatever that almost-laugh was, it was only a little bit amused. "Are you actually asking it?"

Fucker. "No."

"Right." He inhaled again, and put his hands on the table like he was steadying himself. I tensed.

"Well. The answer to the question you're not asking, and all the other questions you might ask about why I'm still around- don't look like that, I've heard you talking with the others- is that I care a lot. About you. And Odi, and Babushka, and Ellen and Cass and Ah Poh and Micah and Orph and Gany-and-Ali, when they're here, and even Ike, the little twerp." The edge of a smile, surprisingly sharp for him. "But you, particularly. Okay? And you can take that however you want, because I know there's a lot you're not comfortable with, and I don't- I don't want to push you."

Peel, uncoiling down from the white-yellow flesh. The sunlight like knives through the trees and the window, dazzling and hard. I could make pancakes instead, I thought, particularly if I stuck the apples in the oven with some sugar. Caramelised them. That'd be nice, Ali would like that.

"I'm not stupid, it's not like I haven't noticed that you never talk about your family, or about anything before you came here. Or even how you came here, although there's some gossip about the man who- please don't murder that apple, Ariadne, it's done nothing wrong and if you cut yourself, Ah Poh will sacrifice me to the kitchen gods."

Wasn't there a cake Olex made, that Dorie Greenspan one? It was basically a pancake batter around a whole lot of caramelised apples, and Ali loved any excuse for baked fruit. She'd turned up last night looking like misery incarnate, and while she wouldn't talk about it with anyone but Ganymede, we'd all learned she was easily comforted by cake. So maybe-

There was a noise from across the table that fell somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "Okay. I'm done. I'm done, I promise. No more feelings."

I nodded, once, because a reply seemed to be expected. My hands kept moving. Red was spilling from white flesh, coiling on the table. The knife kept moving, a repetitive rocking motion in my fingers, the flesh cold. There were scars on my kitchen table, and rings from a thousand coffee cups.

I kept peeling. After a while, I heard him walk away.

I kept peeling.

The cutlery drawer rattled. His hand appeared in my vision, scooped up an apple and disappeared again. Agent Orange poked her head out from under the cupboard with a tiny chirrup and decided to wind herself about my feet, and I peeled apples and kept breathing and listened to the small sounds of him working, feeding the cat, humming a little. Moving through my space like he was comfortable, like he- fit. In this house. In my kitchen. With the rest of us.

It was not unpleasant.

And then- "So," he said, ever so casual. "Have I told you about Atalanta?"

I thought for a moment. "Don't believe so."

"Would you mind if I did?"

I shrugged. When I looked up he was smiling, sly and bright and conspiratorial, and I let myself lean back in my chair and watch him as he talked.

"Okay, so she's an athlete and has  _amazing_  taste in modernist artworks-"

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Di left again, of course. But the next time he turned up, he brought jam for Ganymede, lanterns for Ah Poh and a tiny hedgehog for me.

"You fucker," I said, when I saw it. He grinned at me, utterly unrepentant.

"He was going to get eaten! I thought he might like to go somewhere where he could be fussed over and given a bit of garden to roam, and maybe be at home with other lovely prickly things." He bumped my shoulder, holding out the tiny spike ball in its towel. "Yes? No? Do you think Agent Orange would try to eat him?"

"Probably." But I let him slide the lump of towel-and-spines into my cupped hands, ignoring the light brush of his fingers. When he glanced up, guilt flushed across his face like the start of a sunrise, and he scrunched his nose up (those damn freckles again). "Should I not have? Is this- is he too much?"

"Nah." I nudged him back, careful, and turned for the door. "He's welcome. Come on. Babushka's demanding pudding again and I thought you might need help."

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my thanks to wonderful betas Rosefox and Prinzenhasserin for their patience and encouragement, Morbane for wise advice, gala_apples for brainstorming help, AlexSeanchai for excellent grammar guidance and angelsaves for telling me about hedgehogs and their ability to autofellate.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Lesserstorm!


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